Last year I started the money mistakes series because I was overwhelmed with living hand-to-mouth on a monthly basis. I found that talking about money helps a lot. It also had me set financial goals and being intentional about how I spend my money.

For those of you thinking “I cannot budget to save my life,” I’ll give you the quote of Nelson Mandela: “It seems impossible until it’s done.”

I got retrenched in March, did job hunting until June and in June I started doing freelancing. With this, I set goals every month on things like how many clients do I want by the end of the next month and how much money I’d like to earn at the end of that month.

I met some of my goals by end of August (Yay!) and I realised that there’s power in writing goals down, being specific about how I’m going to achieve it and manifesting it.

MY GOALS FOR 2018
I specifically gave a number to how much money I’m going to save for the little one’s future – per month and the deadline was December.

I couldn’t save money from January to July because of my retrenchment and being unemployed for a few months. I made good money while doing my freelance work and by end of August, I could save money.

I’ve been paying off the last few hundred of my credit card debt – by end of September, I’m going to be done with the last account that I owe money to.

THE CHALLENGES
There were times where I wanted to buy things like food on credit because of the need but luckily I didn’t have to. God came through for us in different ways.

Through the whole retrenchment and unemployment I had to learn what’s wants versus what’s needs. It was hard but because I intentionally reminded myself of my financial goals, I stuck to what’s important to me.

MY MOTIVATION
I learned the importance of manifestation and having faith that things will work out played a role in this.

On social media I followed several financial bloggers, so they always remind me of my goals and give advice on money.

Even though it seemed impossible what I wanted to achieve, I just worked on doing small steps to meet the goals. Now looking back it seems unreal that I could actually meet my goals.

The point is, keep doing and don’t focus on the impossibility.

Have you set financial goals this year? How far have you come to meeting your goals?